Originally Posted by
Harold74
Thank you, all, for your input. Data points...
Clearly, not having yet ridden outdoors with power, my impression of its awesomeness needs some tempering. Anybody wanna mail me their power pedals to demo for a week?!?
That speaks well to how I've been envisioning using a power meter. When I ride the route that I ride, all manner of "events" cause my heartrate to jump temporarily. When that happens, it can easily take a minute or more for my heart rate to come back down. Sometimes as long as five minutes. During that time, which feels like hours:
The stakes with this are abnormally high for me. I'm an unmedicated, lean type 2 diabetic which means, among other things, that I don't have many levers to pull with respect to keeping myself in remission. I'm banking on the strict zone 2 training -- to the tune of 6+ HRS / week -- to yield the mitochondrial improvements that I need rather desperately. In San Millan I trust... for now.
Unmedicated T2 here as well, in remission as well.
I don't think Z2 is your only lever - I do ride at lower intensities most of the time, but I also incorporate blocks of high intensity training over the winter or to "tune up" in the summer. I also pick days to just let it rip, Z3/Z4 rides just for the sake of speed and blowing off some steam.
I pull all the levers from time to time, with no difference in BG's or A1C - in fact, the fitter I get from all training, the better the numbers.
As said above, maintaining tight Z2 power levels on the road is a crap shoot. Even on the "flat" bike path I frequent, 2-3' changes in elevation, up and down slight grade changes you may never even notice, can have big effects on power. Then you have hills, accelerations from stop signs or unintended accelerations... very difficult to use power for Z2.
Even Z4 efforts on my flat path are difficult to keep in range. I'm getting better at maintaining a 20+/-w window, but sometimes you will look down and you are 80w low on a downward grade that you can't even feel, followed by a 100w high on a slight rise.